


Landing a Quad

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon-typical bullying, F/M, Hasetsu, Jealousy, M/M, Morning Sickness, Multi, Pining, Pre-Canon, Season/Series 01, Sedoretu, Teenage Pregnancy, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-23 02:36:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11980281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: Nothing could be more natural than that Takeshi and Yuuko and Yuuri should form three quarters of a sedoretu. It's only a pity, says public opinion in Hasetsu, that they can't find a fourth and give those poor triplets (those appalling triplets!) a stable upbringing in a decent sedoretu.But that's not going to happen, not when those feckless parents can't think of anything beyond skating and Victor Nikiforov.





	1. Takeshi

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [Sedoretu_Fic_Fest](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Sedoretu_Fic_Fest) collection. 



> The sedoretu, from Ursula K. Le Guin's introduction to her story _Mountain Ways_ :
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>  
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> _Note for readers unfamiliar with the planet O:_
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> _Ki'O society is divided into two halves or moieties, called (for ancient religious reasons) the Morning and the Evening. You belong to your mother's moiety, and you can't have sex with anybody of your moiety._
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> _Marriage on O is a foursome, the sedoretu — a man and a woman from the Morning moiety and a man and a woman from the Evening moiety. You're expected to have sex with both your spouses of the other moiety, and not to have sex with your spouse of your own moiety. So each sedoretu has two expected heterosexual relationships, two expected homosexual relationships, and two forbidden heterosexual relationships._
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> _The expected relationships within each sedoretu are:_
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> _The Morning woman and the Evening man (the "Morning marriage")_
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> _The Evening woman and the Morning man (the "Evening marriage")_
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> _The Morning woman and the Evening woman (the "Day marriage")_
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> _The Morning man and the Evening man (the "Night marriage")_
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> _The forbidden relationships are between the Morning woman and the Morning man, and between the Evening woman and the Evening man, and they aren't called anything, except sacrilege._
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> _It's just as complicated as it sounds, but aren't most marriages?_
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> **Prompt:**
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> Yuuri, Yuuko and Takeshi always knew they were going to form a sedoretu, and their relationship has survived the failure of Yuuko's skating career and - perhaps more surprisingly - the relative success of Yuuri's. But now Victor Nikiforov, idolised by at least two of them, has shown up, and nobody can decide whether he's their perfect fourth, or just a disaster.

At first he was just trying to get Yuuko's attention. And it worked. Every time he jostled Yuuri, called him Fatso, Yuuko was there, to jostle him back, or yell back at him.

The only problem was, it _hurt_. Yuuko might be smaller than him, but she could bite, scratch and slap, and she didn't hesitate to do any of those things in Yuuri's defence. She was as protective as any big sister; in fact, it resulted in her being accepted into Mari's gang of Evening girls.

Then Takeshi made Yuuri cry once too often, and Yuuko didn't speak to him for a long time after that, so in that respect it didn't work. But now that she was hanging around with Mari that was probably a good thing. Takeshi was scared of Mari. _Everyone_ was scared of Mari.

After a few years Yuuko and Takeshi both seemed to forget that they weren't speaking, or at least, _why_ they hadn't been speaking. It helped that Yuuri had got to be quite a good skater, and (Takeshi thought) much less annoying. It made much more sense that Yuuko would want to spend time with him, now that he wasn't getting under their feet any more. Although he'd never understand the Victor Nikiforov thing.

Yuuko, meanwhile, had always been quite a good skater, and she was getting better. So much better, in fact, that Takeshi, who had resigned himself to forever being a merely decent skater, found himself intimidated all over again. She had always been smart; she had always been fast; and when she applied those qualities to her skating she became very good indeed.

Well, at least, Takeshi thought, she was no longer applying them to defending Yuuri.

Beating Yuuri up wasn't an option any more, and, even if it had been, Takeshi found that he didn't want to. He'd begun to see things from Yuuko's point of view, to feel quite protective of his younger rinkmate.

As for his feelings about Yuuko... they were rather different.

Takeshi talked the rink manager into giving him a part time job at Ice Castle Hasetsu. If Yuuko was spending all her spare time there, then he wanted a good excuse to be there too. He didn't mind staying beyond regular opening hours. He didn't mind being the last member of staff at the rink. He didn't mind anything, really, so long as it allowed him to be where Yuuko was.

And Yuuko, eyeing Junior Nationals, was staying later and later. One night, sixty-five minutes after Takeshi should have packed up and gone home, she emerged from the changing rooms looking tired, and slightly guilty. 'Sorry I'm so late,' she said.

'I don't mind at all,' Takeshi said, and meant it.

'You're always there,' she said to him, smiling.

'Of course I am,' he said. 'You're always here, too.'

Yuuko put her bag down on the counter and looked at him. 'Maybe,' she suggested, 'we could... go somewhere else?'

He knew he had a stupid grin and he didn't care. 'Together? You and me?'

'Who else?' She leaned across the counter and kissed him, lightly, on the corner of his mouth, and Takeshi thought that the world had suddenly become pretty much perfect.

Then Yuuri appeared, having apparently spent even longer on the ice than Yuuko, and Takeshi found his violent urges resurfacing. But Yuuko simply said, 'Yuuri. Get out.'

Yuuri started to object, and then stopped, and blushed, and said, 'What? Oh, right...' Then he got out, and Yuuko started kissing Takeshi again, and nobody had to beat anybody up.


	2. Yuuko

Yuuko's day had been divided between lying in bed staring at the wall, and throwing up. She'd had to stay off school. She'd even had to miss practice, which she could ill afford to do with the regional championships so close. Now Takeshi was here, sitting on the edge of her bed and rubbing the top of her shoulder as if he didn't quite know what he was meant to be doing, and she wasn't sure whether she was pleased to see him or not.

'Talk to me,' she said, since he was here whether or not she was pleased. 'Distract me.'

'What do you want me to talk about?' He sounded hesitant.

She couldn't see him without craning her neck, and she didn't want to; his caressing hand felt so nice. 'Anything you like. What's on your mind?'

She heard him take a deep breath in. 'Well. Since you ask. Yuuri.'

' _Yuuri?_ ' Did he mean...?

'I know, it's weird,' Takeshi said. Apparently he did mean that. 'Is it weird?'

She opened her mouth to agree with him that it was indeed weird, and then found that she didn't think it was. It made perfect sense. Yuuri was Evening; Takeshi was Morning. Suddenly they were more than half way to a sedoretu. She caught her breath as the possibility struck her. It all felt like a bit much. 'It's what all our families have been hoping for since we started school, probably,' she said. 'I assume you haven't talked to him about it?'

Takeshi's hand stilled. 'He hates me. I bet he hates me.'

She twisted round to look up at him as he sat there on the edge of her bed, tall and broad and endearingly shy. 'Of course Yuuri doesn't hate you. He has precisely two thoughts in his head. Skating, and Victor Nikiforov. He doesn't have room to hate you.'

'You're saying he's not interested in me.'

Yuuko sighed. 'I'm saying you've got as much chance as any Morning person without a figure skating gold medal.'

Takeshi chewed his lip. 'And what if he's not interested?'

'And what if he is?'

' _Yuuko_. It'll be so awkward.'

'Of course it'll be awkward, it's Yuuri.' Another wave of nausea washed over her. 'Seriously. Go and ask him. I want to go to sleep.'

'Go and ask him?' Takeshi echoed.

Yuuko buried her face in the pillow and shut her eyes. 'You know exactly where he'll be.'

She didn't open them again until she felt the mattress shift as Takeshi stood up. He leaned down and kissed her – it was a good job he couldn't reach her mouth, because she'd been sick several times today. 'Good luck,' she muttered.

Yuuri would be at the rink. That much was known. What he'd make of whatever Takeshi was going to say to him, Yuuko couldn't begin to imagine. But she smiled to herself and, as the sound of Takeshi's footsteps faded away, she let herself think of the three of them, travelling the world, skating. It could work. She couldn't understand why it hadn't occurred to her before. Not marriage, not for years yet, but Yuuri and Takeshi, and Takeshi and her. Somebody needed to look after Yuuri and, ironically enough, Yuuko couldn't think of anyone better to help her with the job than Takeshi.

* * *

The sickness didn't pass, not for a fortnight, at the end of which her mother and her othermother sat her down and gently pointed out the obvious.

Simultaneously furious with herself and unable to take it in, Yuuko went to Ice Castle. She skated in small circles, wondering whether her balance was already off, or if she was just imagining it.

Soon, very soon, she knew, she'd have to make a decision.

* * *

'We'll support you,' her mother said.

'Whatever it is,' her othermother added. 'Whatever you decide is right for you.'

She cried, and cried, and didn't decide anything.

* * *

Yuuri and Takeshi were out on a date. It was their first official one, in that it was the first one that involved anything more than putting dusty corners of the rink to good use. It was not at all official, in that nobody except Yuuko knew that it was happening, or that it was a date. As for Yuuko herself, she was sitting on the steps outside Ice Castle Hasetsu and waiting for them to get back in time for Takeshi's evening shift, and rehearsing every possible variation of the news in her head.

They were holding hands, which Yuuko would have found rather touching, if she hadn't had so much on her mind.

'How did it go?' she asked, because they seemed to expect it.

'It was good,' Yuuri said. 'We, er, we walked down by the seashore.'

'Yuuri told me,' Takeshi said, 'about the colleges he's applied to.'

Yuuko knew about the colleges that Yuuri had applied to. 'Exciting, isn't it?' she managed to say.

Yuuri beamed. 'But of course I wouldn't be starting this year, and I need to think about Junior Nationals, of course...'

'Of course,' Yuuko echoed. And she burst into tears.

'Yuuko?' Yuuri said, 'Is everything all right?'

She wiped her nose on her sleeve. 'We have a problem,' she said. 'I'm pregnant.'

She knew as soon as the words were out of her mouth that she'd said it wrong. Yuuri was already panicking. 'How... what...?'

Takeshi was doing his best to keep it together, she could tell. 'Oh, Yuuko, I'm sorry. It's my fault. We didn't use...'

'No, we didn't,' Yuuko said. 'It's both our faults.'

Yuuri had caught on and was blushing furiously.

'But what about Nationals?' he asked.

* * *

'But what about your studies?' her father asked.

* * *

'Do I need to beat anyone up?' Mari asked.

* * *

Yuuko answered, 'I don't _know_ ,' to the first two, and 'No,' to the third.

* * *

There was talk. How could two teenagers – nobody knew about Yuuri, so nobody mentioned Yuuri, which was probably a good thing, on balance – hope to bring up a baby on their own? Somebody ought to arrange a sedoretu. Mr Watanabe knew a lovely Morning couple, just a few years older. Takeshi's sister Ikumi knew a lovely Morning couple, just a few years older. So, it seemed, did everyone else in Hasetsu.

* * *

 _Three_ babies, it was going to be. Well. That was something else.

Suddenly, the lovely Morning couples did not seem to be so interested. And suddenly, Yuuko knew. Somehow, she couldn't argue with three.

* * *

 _But what about Nationals?_ she asked herself, and she knew the answer. _It would have been nice, but I wouldn't have won._

* * *

After they were born, she didn't really have time to think about whether she regretted it or not. She was constantly aware (woken at two in the morning to change Lutz and feed Loop and calm down Axel) that she could have chosen differently, but, well, she hadn't. And there wasn't much she could do about it now.

* * *

And then the inevitable happened. Somebody noticed how good Yuuri was.

* * *

Yuuko hardly ever went to the Ice Castle these days, so Yuuri had to come to the house to tell her about it. Her otherfather let him in and sent him straight through to find her.

She could tell from his face that there was news. 'Well?'

'Detroit,' he said, blankly, as if he had never heard of it, as if she hadn't stood there at his shoulder correcting his English as he filled in the application.

'That's wonderful! I knew they'd see how talented you are. You'd have a decent coach there?'

He nodded, wonderingly. 'Celestino Cialdini. He's written to me personally.'

Yuuko was impressed.

'I don't know if I should go,' he said.

'Why ever not?'

'You know.'

'Yuuri,' she said, as gently as she could manage, 'you're being offered something that all three of us have always wanted. If you don't take this chance I'll never forgive you.'

'But how will you manage, just the two of you?' Yuuri twisted his hands worriedly. 'I should be here, I should support you...'

Yuuko bit back a retort. When it came to the triplets, Yuuri was about as helpful as you'd expect of a seventeen year old boy with few thoughts in his head beyond sex, figure skating and Victor Nikiforov, and really, Yuuko didn't _mind_ that, but his absence wasn't going to make much difference on a practical level. She'd miss him – they'd both miss him – but it would be for his own sake. She just said, 'We'll manage. And we'll still be here when you get back.'

Yuuri shook his head. 'No. I can't ask you to wait for me.'

'You don't have to ask.'

'What about Takeshi, then?'

'Takeshi would wait for you. You know he would.'

'I can't! It's all too new! And what about you? What if you find your other Morning person and they already have a partner?'

'You might meet people in Detroit, if it comes to that,' Yuuko pointed out. 'Go. And have an amazing time. _And don't worry about us._ '

Just then, Axel started crying, and they left it like that.


	3. Yuuri

Yuuri was never going to meet someone in Detroit. He'd known that from the beginning. It took him years to get to know someone well enough to open up to them.

Lonely, miserable, out of his depth, he threw himself into skating and tried to forget about the life that he'd left behind him. Takeshi and Yuuko were far, far away, preoccupied with the triplets. It had never been meant to be like this, with him out on his own.

Even when Yuuko had started worrying out loud about whether she was good enough to keep skating seriously, even when Yuuri had begun to believe that she might mean it seriously, he'd assumed that they'd always be there, with him.

He hadn't thought that he'd end up a continent away. He hadn't thought that Hasetsu roots went so deep; he hadn't begun to imagine how lost he'd feel without his family, or, yet more, without Yuuko and Takeshi.

'We miss you, Yuuri!' they chorused across thousands of miles of internet cable, but Yuuko had a baby in her arms, and Takeshi was jiggling another over his shoulder, and on the screen none of them felt any more real than Victor Nikiforov on the poster about Yuuri's bed.

All of the Evening moiety was meant to be his family, but he seemed to have nothing in common with anybody here.

The only thing that he had brought with him was skating.

Things got a little better when Phichit Chulanont arrived in Detroit. Phichit was Morning, and, more to the point, he understood about skating and about being a long way from home, and he managed to make Yuuri's life bearable. But he wasn't Victor and he certainly wasn't Takeshi.

Still, there was always skating.

(And maybe, maybe – Yuuri could never quite silence the little voice that kept whispering _maybe, maybe_ – he could make it work, maybe he could get all the way to the top, maybe he could skate on the same ice as Victor.)

Because after all, there was always Victor. Or, rather, there was always the idea of Victor, untouchable, unchanging, unchallenged.

Yuuri got better and better, and he never seemed to be quite good enough.

Until he was.

And then he wasn't.

Yuuri went home.


	4. Victor

'I don't think he's ever quite realised,' Yuuko said, her eyes soft, 'how glad we were to see him back. Particularly Takeshi. But of course that's not where it began...'

* * *

So far as Victor was concerned, it began with too much champagne, an invitation to an onsen, and a Youtube video.

He heard the rest of the story in dribs and drabs.

'Yuuko was mortified,' Yuuri said. 'But how can anyone be expected to keep control of those three on their own? Takeshi was mortified – I think he was worried that I'd think he was trying to keep me out of the way while the others humiliated me. And of course I was mortified.'

'Of course,' Victor agreed, smiling. 'And I flew half way around the world on the strength of it, so I should probably be mortified, too.' Although, of course, he wasn't.

Yuuri went on, 'And the triplets, who really should be ashamed of themselves, aren't, at all. Because they think they got everything right, you see. Because then you turned up.'

* * *

'I'd gone back to the inn with Yuuri,' Nishigori said. 'I suppose it was asking for trouble, leaving Yuuko to deal with the kids alone. She's only got two eyes and two hands. But, well, I wasn't thinking about that, not when he skated your program. You saw the video. Imagine what it was like being there.'

'And so you and Yuuri...?' Victor prompted, delicately.

Nishigori grinned. 'We picked up where we left off.'

Victor felt hot envy course through him. _Why did you have to use my program to tell them?_ he asked an imaginary Yuuri. But he knew the answer. It said what Yuuri was trying to say. _Stammi vicino... Stay close to me._ It was a promise that he'd never leave them again. Nobody had thought that the triplets might be filming, that the routine might find its way back to its creator. Nobody had meant to lure Victor here under false pretences. But that was Yuuri for you, he thought, gorgeous, thoughtless, Yuuri, who would never think enough of himself to imagine that he could break a heart by skating a program.

'And then?'

Nishigori was still grinning. 'And then _you_ turned up.'

* * *

Whoever was telling the story, it always ended with, 'And then _you_ turned up.'

_And then I turned up,_ Victor said to himself, _and threw a spanner in the works_. It was clear to him that Yuuri and Yuuko and Nishigori would have settled gently back into the three-quarters of a sedoretu that they'd always been intended to be, and there'd have been a third pair of eyes to watch the triplets, and they'd have found a fourth somewhere – the girls would have _made_ it happen – and they'd all have been happy.

And Yuuri would have retired.

Victor still didn't know what he wanted, but he was sure that he didn't want Yuuri to retire. Bored to tears by his own routines, and sick of the taste of gold, he had found in Yuuri's story something new, something challenging, something intriguing. Retirement played no part in his plans for Yuuri, and it would surely be inevitable if a sedoretu was formed, if they stayed in Hasetsu.

Hasetsu was where great artists came to mourn the passing of their youth and talent in a slow decline into alcoholic obscurity. Victor saw it in Okukawa Minako. He was resigned to it for himself. But he wanted more for Yuuri.

* * *

So did Minako. 'Victor,' she said, 'promise me you won't give up on him.'

'In what way?' Victor couldn't help joking.

She kicked him and topped up his sake at the same time, which could have ended in a messier fashion than in fact it did. 'As a skater. Any other objectives are your own business.'

'You're lucky I've retired,' Victor said, rubbing his shin. 'My ankles are insured for millions.'

Minako ignored that, and said, with dignity, 'Yuuri is my beloved otherchild, and I want the best for him.'

'So do I,' Victor said.

'I do hope so.' Minako waggled her eyebrows at him in a most unothermotherly fashion. 'And if that's not all you want, well... he could probably do worse.'

* * *

Did Victor want Yuuri? Of course he did.

Victor tried to tell him, choreographing _Eros_ to bring out his sensual side, to show Yuuri that he saw it, that he wanted him.

But Yuuri blushed and stammered about katsudon, and then disappeared every night to make up for lost time with Nishigori, and Victor was left to confide his frustrations to a handful of tissue paper and his regrets to Makkachin.

'Why did I come here, Makka?' he asked.

Makkachin had no answers.

* * *

_Yuri on Ice_ was possibly the best program that Victor had ever choreographed: the chronicle of everyone who had ever loved Yuuri and of how Yuuri loved the ice.

It hurt. Every moment of it hurt, and Victor couldn't tear his eyes away. 'This was the part where I showed up to be your coach,' he murmured to himself. 'It looks like you didn't like it at all!'

But that didn't matter. It was more than enough for Yuuri to take gold at the Chugoku, Shikoku and Kyushu Championship.

Afterwards, they gathered at Yu-topia along with Yuuri's family for the JSF press conference, Yuuko and Nishigori and the triplets.

Victor had already had an idea of what was going to be in Yuuri's statement, and he knew it was going to hurt. It hurt even more hearing it in Yuuko's fond, breathy voice. 'There was love all around me – my family, my hometown, my dear friends – and I didn't realise it. Now that Victor's here to help me, I'm going to show the world that I know the power of love.'

Out of the corner of his eye, Victor saw Nishigori's hand creep towards Yuuko's, and the triplets dancing with delight. He hugged Makkachin closer.

* * *

And then at the Cup of China Yuuri, brilliant, beautiful Yuuri, finished with a defiant quad flip, and at last Victor understood what he was trying to say. Victor was in this story, and Yuuri wanted him there.

* * *

The next few weeks were heaven.

* * *

'After the final,' Yuuri said, 'let's end this.'

For an awful moment, Victor thought _this_ meant their relationship, and by the time they'd finished, it did. Yuuri, it seemed, wanted Victor, but he wanted Victor the competitor, not Victor the coach, and as for Victor the lover...

Unsure as to which, if any, of those people he was, Victor left Yuuri to sulk in their room and set out for a walk to clear his head. He did not get very far. Lurking purposefully in the lobby of Hotel Catalonia were Mari, Minako, and Yuuko.

'I didn't realise you were all coming,' Victor said, for want of anything better.

'The girls insisted. Takeshi and I tossed a coin for it,' Yuuko said, as if that explained anything at all.

Mari looked at Minako looked at Yuuko. Yuuko looked at Mari. A silent, motionless, battle seemed to be taking place. Eventually Yuuko shrugged, nodded, and stepped forwards. 'Victor,' she said, 'let's go and get a bottle of wine, and you can tell me what's going on with Yuuri. Because he's gone quiet, and we're worried.'

Yuuri's sister was intimidating. Yuuri's othermother was terrifying. But Victor would have taken either of them over the sweet-faced lover of Yuuri's other lover.

(Yuuri's _only_ lover, he reminded himself. Because, whatever Victor had had with him, he was pretty sure that it was gone.)

Mari and Minako nodded at each other. 'We'll see you later, then,' Mari said. She managed to make it sound like a threat.

* * *

'So,' Yuuko said, in a resigned sort of way, 'tell me about it.'

'Yuuri. He wants to end this.'

'End... what?'

Victor laughed without humour. 'That's the question, isn't it? He wants to end his skating career, and our professional relationship.'

'Yurio's been worrying about that all year,' Yuuko said, surprisingly. 'Him retiring, I mean.'

'After Rostelecom,' Victor said, 'Yuuri asked me to be his coach until he retired. I didn't think he was going to retire this soon.'

'He isn't,' Yuuko said at once. 'At least, he doesn't have to. He thinks it's you or him, and he knows you want to go on as a skater, and he knows you can't do that and coach him at the same time.'

'How on earth do you know that?' Victor demanded.

'I've known him a long time,' Yuuko said, simply, and whether that meant that Yuuri told her things, or just that he didn't have to, Victor didn't know.

'Tell me more,' he said.

'Yuuri's trouble,' she told Victor, 'is that he can't see the long view. He thinks that, if something is a particular way now, that's how it's always going to be. The rest of us just have to work around that. You'll come to understand that, if you stick around for much longer. I hope you do.'

Victor thought about that. 'He doesn't want to stop skating. I don't want him to. And he doesn't want to stop me skating, and I...'

'Yes?'

'I do want to skate. I've missed it.'

'We've missed _you_ ,' Yuuko said.

'Then I'll coach him _and_ skate at the same time! I could do that!'

Yuuko looked hard at him, then, apparently satisfied, she nodded. 'You'll have to go to St Petersburg, of course, but that's all right. Hasetsu isn't going anywhere. Nor are the rest of us. Tell him we'll be waiting. For you, too.'

He drew a breath in. 'What are you saying?'

Yuuko raised her eyebrows, as if it were obvious. 'I'm asking you to marry us.'

'Wow,' Victor said. He smiled, his long-practised press conference smile, to gain time to think.

It was the obvious solution, and it had been from the moment he set foot in Hasetsu. But he'd never let himself think that it was a possibility.

He hadn't expected to fall in love with Yuuri. Nor had he expected to fall in love with everything and everyone that had anything to do with Yuuri, and Hasetsu felt so complete, so snug, so perfectly itself, that he didn't think he could possibly fit in there.

'We know how you feel about Yuuri, of course. It depends,' Yuuko said, 'on what you feel about the rest of us. Specifically me, I suppose.'

It was an unexpected idea, but, now he considered it, not an unpleasant one. Yuuko? He liked Yuuko a lot. He appreciated her cheerfulness, her unfailing patience with the most difficult of people. (The triplets. Yurio. Victor himself.) Could it be more? Looking at the nervous curve of her smile, remembering long conversations at the side of the ice, he thought that perhaps it could.

And it was true. He didn't just want Yuuri. He wanted what Yuuri had. He hadn't expected to want it so much. He hadn't _let_ himself want it so much.

'You're lovely. You've all made me so welcome,' Victor said wistfully. 'But marriage? _You'd_ want to do that?' He meant Yuuko, specifically, now, and he cursed English and its ambiguities.

She surveyed him with frank appraisal, and laughed without self-consciousness. 'Oh, it'll be no hardship for me. _I_ used to copy your routines as well, you know. I'm not sure what's in it for you.'

'It would make Yuuri happy, wouldn't it? That's what's in it for me,' Victor said. 'That's what's in it for all of us. And I don't think that would have to be all there was to it.'

She nodded. 'We'd have to work that out. _The trickiest link is the one that joins the circle._ ' It was, he supposed some sort of proverb. 'We probably would. I think we could have fun, you and I.'

'Yes.' He drew a breath. 'But – not yet.'

'No. Not yet. We've waited for him before,' she said, 'and we're prepared to wait again. Until you retire, until he retires, whatever it takes.'


	5. Wedding nights

The marriage took place the year after Victor retired.

The triplets remained convinced that the whole thing had been their doing, and letting them believe that saved everyone else a whole lot of trouble with the wedding planning. The combination of their imagination and Victor's bank balance made for a wedding the likes of which Hasetsu had never seen before, and would never see again. The girls who at the age of six had made a tolerable fist of running an ice show, were now breezing through the intricacies of an international celebrity wedding as if it were, well, child's play. They had even managed to arrange their own childcare for the duration of the honeymoon.

* * *

Yuuri wasn't sure if he'd ever been so happy, or so tired. It was done.

'We're married,' Victor said, as if it had only just occurred to him.

'Yes,' Yuuri agreed.

'Yuuri,' Victor said, his words a warm, alcoholic caress. 'Are you happy?'

He did his best to smile. 'Very.' But he couldn't stop it slipping out. 'Except I can't quite believe it's going to last. I keep wondering what I've done to deserve it.'

Victor crossed the room in two graceful strides and took both of Yuuri's hands between his own. 'It's going to last. That was the whole point of today.' He said it the same way that he used to tell anyone who asked that of course Yuuri was going to win gold. It might not turn out to be true, but that wouldn't be the fault of either of them. Oddly enough, it worked in much the same way now, bringing Yuuri out of the vast vague generality and into this specific moment.

Yuuri pulled Victor closer and reached up to kiss him. 'Victor...' he breathed, and he felt his nerves melt into desire.

* * *

'There we go,' Yuuko said, leaning up to kiss Takeshi. 'We did it. It only took us fifteen years.'

'You did it,' he said as he undid her bra. 'You made it happen.'

Yuuko laughed, wriggled it off and threw it across the room. 'Don't tell the girls that.'

'They did a good job, though, didn't they?'

'They did.'

It had all been very exuberant, and a little overwhelming. Yuuko had been rather grateful for that. It had kept her from thinking too much about -

\- _tomorrow_ -

but at least tonight was familiar, and sweet, and she'd always known that this was hers, that she'd always have it, but now everyone else knew it, too.

* * *

Victor had never seen Yuuko nervous before. Not on her own behalf, at least. He'd seen her chewing her fingernails to the quick while she watched the screen where a minuscule Yuuri was skating; he'd seen her apologise to a fellow parent for something outrageous that one of the triplets had done to their children. He'd never seen her doubt herself, unable to meet his eye.

It was three years, now, since she'd suggested they get married, and that was plenty of time for her to have second thoughts. They'd always said – Nishigori and Yuuri had said it, too – that they really ought to go away together, just the two of them, get a feel for how their marriage might work, but somehow it had never happened. There had always been a competition, or a shift at Ice Castle Hasetsu that nobody else could cover, or a crisis with the triplets. Now there was no getting away from it.

'We don't have to,' he said. 'Not if you don't want to.'

'No, that isn't it... I mean, it might be terrible, it probably will be, but we'll get better with practice...' She shook her head. Then, 'Takeshi will tell you,' she said, and stopped.

Victor waited. Next door, he thought, Yuuri and Takeshi must know exactly what they were doing.

'Takeshi will tell you,' she said again. 'Yuuri and me. We both thought you were the best thing. And then Yuuri went off and he found you, and you came here for him. But you get me, too, and I don't know how you feel about that. Because this – _you_ – you've always been my dream, but I don't see how I can possibly be yours.'

'Oh, Yuuko,' he said. 'I don't want dreams. I want something real. This is it.'

'Really?'

'Once,' he said, 'I asked Yuuri what he wanted me to be to him, and he said, myself. Well, he said _yourself_ , but he meant me. But anyway. He was right.'

Yuuko laughed. 'Come here,' she said, and kissed him, hard, and from there it was all right.

* * *

Afterwards, Yuuri lay with his head pillowed on Takeshi's chest, and Takeshi felt a great sense of relief, as if they had all been very close to disaster, and had come through it simply by refusing to believe that anything was impossible for them.

But it had worked, and this was right, and true, this was the way things had always been meant to be.

This was Yuuri, who always came back to him. To _them_.

This was the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> Moieties, for reference (characters who don't appear in the story but whose moiety it is useful to know in italics):
> 
>  **Morning**  
>  Victor  
> Takeshi  
> Minako  
> Phichit  
>  _Toshiya_  
>  _Yurio_
> 
>  **Evening**  
>  Yuuri  
> Yuuko  
> Mari  
> the triplets  
>  _Hiroko_


End file.
